The Patriarch of Monks

The introduction to the Life of St. Antony, written by the great St. Athanasius, (297?-373), reads: "The life and conversation of our holy Father, Antony: written and sent to the monks in foreign parts by our Father among the Saints, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria."  

The fame of Antony the Abbot (c. 251-356) was legendary among the monks and solitaries of the desert.  Unfortunately, few knew him all that well.  Athanasius, who was well-acquainted with the holy man, wanted to draw upon his own experience and share the real Antony with them.  "Wherefore do not refuse evidence to what you have heard from those who brought tidings of him; but think rather that they have told you only a few things, for at all events they scarcely can have given circumstances of so great import in any detail...I, at your request, have called to mind a few circumstances about him, and shall send as much as I can tell in a letter...I was desirous, when I received your letter, to send for certain of the monks, those especially who were wont to be more frequently with him, that if I could learn any fresh details I might send them to you.  But since the season for sailing was coming to an end and the letter-carrier [was] urgent, I hastened to write to your piety what I myself know, having seen him many times, and what I was able to learn from him, for I was his attendant for a long time..."

Antony was an Egyptian by descent.  He came from a good and rather wealthy family, and was raised in the Christian faith.  Athanasius notes that from infancy on Antony was pretty much a home-body.  As he grew into boyhood and adolescence, "he could not endure to learn letters, not caring to associate with other boys; but all his desire was...to live [as] a plain man at home."  But Antony was no dummy.  He was attentive and obedient.  He attended church with his parents, helped them with chores, and always respected them.  He was a rich kid, of "moderate affluence" according to Athanasius, yet was content with his state in life and didn't seek out "varied or luxurious fare".  He accepted the status into which he'd been born, without seeking beyond it.

When Antony was somewhere between 18 and 20 his parents died, leaving him and a younger sister orphans.  Despite his youth, Antony sought strength and guidance in his religion, and thought and prayed long hours about what he should do next.  At length he determined to sell the property, some 300 "productive and fair" acres, since he realized that he and his sister would be unable to keep it up.  As for the rest, he sold all that was movable, thus realizing a good bit of money.  He set sufficient funds aside for his sister, then gave the remainder to the poor in a spirit of true Gospel poverty.  

As God's plan for him was becoming clearer to him, he took his sister to "known and faithful virgins", and placed her in a convent to be raised there.  A hard decision, both for the little girl, and for such a young man.  Feeling the draw to monastic life, "he henceforth devoted himself outside his house to discipline, taking heed to himself and training himself with patience".  There were few monasteries at that time, and desert hermits were virtually unheard of.  So those drawn to a solitary life chose to live ascetically near their own villages.  Antony discovered a mentor in the next village over, an old man who'd lived as a hermit from his youth, and Antony began to live as he did.  "Like a prudent bee", Athanasius says, he worked with his hands and used what money he had to help the needy and to buy bread for himself.  He prayed constantly and, attentive as he'd learned to be all along, he trained his memory to retain what he heard and, according to Athanasius, "afterwards his memory served him for books."  Surely cheaper than it is for many of us today! Apparently, this became commonplace for the early monks who used to memorize the Psalter, and therefore had a vast reservoir upon which to draw as they counselled others.

Antony was apparently a lovable human being.  He learned from his elders and only competed with those his own age in not being second to them in things of the spirit.  So much so that people of his village and his other spiritual colleagues and associates referred to him as "God-beloved".  

But the life of a solitary was by no means a bed of roses for Antony.  From the start he was tested and tried by the forces of evil.  Every demonic trick which could be employed was used against Antony, especially at the very points of his spiritual strength.  Antony figured it out early on, and could exclaim, once temptation had subsided: "the Lord is my helper". He kept a determined focus and by working with his hands, constant prayer, fasting, and vigilance he moved, step-by-step, ever closer to union with God.  Athanasius recounts one particularly intense encounter which Antony, when he was about 35, had with the demons: "...But Antony, feeling the help and getting his breath again, and being freed from pain, besought the vision [of God] which had appeared to him, saying, 'Where were you? Why did you not appear at the beginning to make my pains stop?' And a voice came to him, 'Antony, I was here, but I waited to see your fight; since you have endured and have not been worsted, I will ever be a succour to you, and will make your name known everywhere..."

After that, Antony set off for the mountains and greater solitude, and settled in there for the next twenty years. Acquaintances would check on him periodically, to deliver bread and to see if he was still alive, but though they couldn't see him, they could often hear him singing.  Finally, says Athanasius, "...Antony, as from a shrine, came forth initiated in the mysteries and filled with the Spirit of God.  Then for the first time he was seen outside the fort by those who had come to see him.   And they, when they saw him, wondered at the sight, for he had the same habit of body as before, and was neither fat , like a man without exercise, nor lean from fasting and striving with the demons, but he was just the same as they had known him before...he was altogether even as being guided by reason...[God] gave grace to Antony in speaking...he persuaded many to embrace the solitary life.  And thus it happened in the end that cells arose even in the mountains, and the desert was colonized by monks, who came forth from their own people, and enrolled themselves for the citizenship in the heavens..."    

As the monastic movement, in imitation of God-beloved Antony, grew and prospered, Antony maintained his steady, day-by-day, routine of simple living, prayer, and penance.  Nevertheless, he and the other monks were definitely attuned to events in the world around them.  They even emerged from their solitude when Maximinus began to persecute the Church, in order to be of assistance to their sisters and brothers.  Once the threat subsided, Antony returned not only to the desert, but to the "inner desert" which he'd learned about from some Saracens.  "Antony then," declares Athanasius, "as it were, moved by God, loved the place...And recognizing it was his own home, he remained in that place for the future."  He grew old here, with others seeing to his necessities.  He himself wove baskets for those who came, in return for what they brought him.  Occasionally Antony would visit the little cells of monks which had grown up in the general area.  Even his sister, "grown old in virginity", herself now a leader of other virgins, gave him the joy of a visit.  For the most part, he remained in his chosen seclusion.  Only when certain people involved in the Arian heresy claimed that Antony's opinions where the same as theirs, did Antony become so upset that he marched down the mountain and into Alexandria where he denounced the Arians as "forerunners of the Antichrist".  He clearly taught the people that the Son of God was not a created being, nor had He come into being from non-existence, but that Christ was "the Eternal Word and Wisdom of the Essence of the Father...Wherefore have no fellowship with the most impious Arians..."  Antony, despite his lack of book learning, was intelligent, "ready-witted, and sagacious".  Through his refutation of the Arians and his brilliant teaching in Alexandria, Athanasius observes that "...as many became Christians in those few days as one would have seen made in a year..."

If his dates are close to being accurate, Antony was certainly in his 90's, perhaps close to 100, when he finally fell ill. Knowing that he was going "the way of the fathers" and being "called by the Lord", he summoned two faithful and seasoned monks who'd been with him on the mountain for 15 years in order to make his final arrangements.  He asked them to personally bury his body and hide it underground in a place which only they would know.  His garments were to be divided: one sheepskin and the garment on which he was laid, to Athanasius, who had given him the garment when it was new; the other sheepskin, to Bishop Serapion; the hair garment, they could keep themselves.  'For the rest, fare ye well, my children, for Antony is departing, and is with you no more.'"

Athanasius concludes: "...This is the end of Antony's life in the body...Even if this account is small compared with his merit, still from this reflect [on] how great Antony, the man of God, was.  Who from his youth to so great an age preserved a uniform zeal for the discipline...For his eyes were undimmed and quite sound and he saw clearly; of his teeth he had not lost one, but they had become worn to the gums through the great age of the old man.  He remained strong both in hands and feet...he appeared more cheerful and of greater strength...For not from writings, nor from worldly wisdom, nor through any art, was Antony renowned, but solely from his piety towards God...For from whence into Spain and into Gaul, how into Rome and Africa, was the man heard of who abode hidden in a mountain, unless it was God who makes His own known everywhere...

Read these words, therefore, to the rest of the brothers that they may learn what the life of monks ought to be..."

 

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. - Extremist for Love & Justice

It's been awhile since I read King's powerful Letter From a Birmingham Jail, written April 16, 1963.  Addressed to Birmingham clergy and the local ecumenical religious community, it's a masterful apologia for his lifetime's work: as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as a clergyman son, grandson, and great-grandson of clergymen, as an African-American citizen, and as a human being and citizen of the world.  The letter vividly displays his courage, his honesty in the face of criticism, his vulnerability as a human being, his passion for justice and human rights of all people, his diplomacy, his way with words, and his great love of humankind.

His message is even more potent these 46 years later as we prepare for the inauguration, in five days, of our country's first African-American president.  We've come a long way in the effort for racial justice: that's indisputable.  But, particularly as the recent tragic event in Oakland graphically reminds us, we're nowhere close yet to that for which Martin Luther King, Jr. hoped and gave his life.  

In this short tribute to a great modern prophetic witness, short because it's impossible to express fully the importance and reality for which MLK stood, perhaps just a few excerpts from his letter will suffice:

"...I am in Birmingham because injustice is here...I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town..."

"...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality...Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly...Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country..."

"In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: 1) Collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive.  2) Negotiation.  3) Self-purification and 4) Direct action..."

"My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.  History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.  Individuals may see the moral right and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals...freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed...This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never'...when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodiness', then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait..."

"...Any law that uplifts human personality is just.  Any law that degrades human personality is unjust...Segregation substitutes an 'I-it' relationship for an 'I-thou' relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.  So segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful.  Paul Tillich said that sin is separation.  Isn't segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?..."

"...human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.  It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.  We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right..."

"Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.  The urge for freedom will eventually come...Consciously and unconsciously, [the American Negro] has been swept in by what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa, and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, he is moving with a sense of cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice..."

"Was not Jesus an extremist for love...Was not Amos an extremist for justice...Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist...Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist...So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be.  Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice--or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?...So, after all, maybe the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists..."

+  +  +

Martin Luther King, Jr. has much to say in the letter about the contemporary Church, and it's not a pretty picture.  Yet, in clearly loving and respectful, but brutally honest, images and words King describes the attitude of the religious establishment in this country which, unfortunately, largely rings true even today, despite the great strides taken:

"...I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership.  Of course, there are some notable exceptions...But despite these notable exceptions I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church...I say it as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it..."

"I had the strange feeling...several years ago, that we would have the support of the white church...Instead, some have been outright opponents...all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of the stained-glass windows..."

"So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a tail-light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice..."

"...I have wept over the laxity of the church.  But be assured that my tears have been tears of love.  There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.  Yes, I love the church...Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and fear of being nonconformists..."

"...But even if the church does not come to aid of justice, I have no despair about the future...We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom...If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail..."

+   +   +

The letter concludes with these eloquent words:

"If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me.  If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me..."

We definitely need more "extremists for love & justice"!

  

   

Friends

One of the truly heartwarming revelations emerging out of my son's recent and ongoing illness was and is the sheer number of friends who have touched his life and he, theirs, and who have rallied to his support.  Quite fitting to be thinking about this today, the feast of St. Aelred of Rievaulx.  Aelred had, early on, become fascinated with Cicero's ancient dialogue On Friendship, and went on to write his own treatise on spiritual friendship.

Aelred (c. 1110-1167 A.D.) was a twelfth century abbot of the Trappist monastery of Rievaulx in England.  He was born "Ethelred", an Anglo-Saxon, in Northumbria, along the Anglo-Scottish border.  His great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were all married priests.  Aelred had two brothers and a sister; one brother and his sister later became monastics as he did.

At age 15, in 1125, Aelred was sent to live and be educated at the court of the King of Scots, David I.  He became close friends with the king's two stepsons, Simon and Waldef, and was appointed steward of the royal table.  Cicero's On Friendship, mentioned above, seems to have influenced Aelred the rest of his life.  He became the intimate friend of a member of the court by his own account. There is indication that he himself may have been a gay man.  At any rate, in time, Aelred became greatly dissatisfied and restless about life at the court, almost, he says, to the point of despair.  

While on a mission to York in 1134, Aelred rode over to the new Cistercian monastery, only two years old, at Rievaulx. He was so deeply impressed that, after discussion with his friends, he entered the monastery the very next day.

Around 1142 he was sent to Rome, and on the way back Aelred stopped at the monastery of Clairvaux where he met the noted abbot and preacher, Bernard of Clairvaux.  Bernard, himself no slouch when it came to understanding love, both human and divine, was quite taken with Aelred's spiritual depth and literary promise.  

Back at Rievaulx, Aelred was made novice master in 1142 and began writing books at Bernard's behest.  A year later he was sent to found a new abbey at Revesby.  Four years later, in 1147, at 37 years of age, Aelred was called back to become the abbot of Rievaulx, a position which he held for for the next twenty years.

Aelred continued writing, and during this time he wrote Spiritual Friendship, among other works: a magnificent book of only some 81 pages which reflects the depth of his understanding and lived experience of friendship among people.

Aelred was kept busy not only with writing, but with visitations to several daughter houses, trips to General Chapter at Citeaux, not to mention his day-to-day administration of the monastery of Rievaulx.  It had grown from 300 monks when he became abbot to over 600 monks and lay brothers.  

The last ten years of Aelred's life were marked by ill-health, chiefly from kidney stones.  Having personally had such episodes twice within the past 17 years, I can tell you that Aelred was no stranger to pain!  Though I've never had a baby, I'm guessing that the pain levels of both giving birth and kidney stones have a lot in common.  Because of his afflictions, Aelred lived and ate in a small infirmary cell, but graciously welcomed his monks to always come, sometime 20 to 30 at a time, to be with one another and to converse about the life of the spirit.

Aelred died on January 12, 1167 at the age of 57, surrounded by his monks, with these last words as his legacy: "Festinate, for crist love. [Hasten, for Christ love.]"   His biographer, Master Walter Daniel, who recorded these words says that Aelred spoke the Lord's name in English because he found it "easier to utter, and in some ways sweeter to hear" in the language of his birth.

The treatise on Spiritual Friendship had been written initially for an enquiring monk, Ivo of Wardon, who wanted to know about spiritual friendship, and not just from such secular sources like Cicero's treatise.  Ivo felt that the latter lacked "the salt of heavenly books and the flavoring of that most sweet name..."  

A few quotations from Aelred's book will give you a taste of how he understood friendship:

"...Friendship bears fruit in this life and in the next." (SF, 2.9)

"For what more sublime can be said of friendship, what more true, what more profitable, than that it ought to, and is proved to, begin in Christ, continue in Christ, and be perfected in Christ?" (SF, 1.10)

"And, a thing even more excellent than all these considerations, friendship is a stage bordering upon that perfection which consists in the love and knowledge of God, so that man from being a friend of his fellowman becomes the friend of God." (SF, 1.14)

This is, I believe, a perfect illustration of what St. Thomas Aquinas meant when he commented: "Grace build upon nature."  In his Gospel account (2:25), John the Evangelist assures us that Jesus "knew all people...he himself could tell what was in people."  And so Jesus could say to his chosen twelve followers:  "...love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.  You are my friends if you do what I earnestly admonish you to do.  I do not call you servants...but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father...and I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last..." (John 15:12-16)

The Gospels are full of Jesus' references to "friends":  John the Baptizer referred to himself as the "friend of the Bridegroom"; Jesus, says Mark, "called to him[self] those whom he wanted, and they came to him.  And he appointed twelve, whom he named apostles ["ones sent"], to be with him..."; Jesus' critics called him "a friend of tax collectors and sinners"; and Jesus refers to "our friend", Lazarus, as he journies to dramatically restore him to life.

Jesus, however, was also realistic.  He knew that friendships don't always last and aren't always sustained by both parties.  After the unusual message Jesus preached about "the living bread that came down from heaven [referring to himself], Scripture says: "Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him."  Jesus responded as such a caring friend himself that he even gave the Twelve the opportunity to opt out.  Their response: "...to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life."  Luke recounts in his Gospel a story about a person who, looking to his own convenience and comfort, didn't want to be bothered helping his friend in a time of need.  Jesus uses the parable to contrast this with God's always-reliable friendship, and to demonstrate the need for persistence in prayers. Finally, Jesus modelled how a friendship-gone-bad needs to be handled.  Judas, one of the most trusted of the Twelve, the keeper of the purse, goes to the chief priests and says: "What will you give me if I betray him to you?" Though Jesus is very direct and forthright with Judas, both before and after the betrayal, never once does he disavow his friendship; he doesn't bad-mouth Judas, or attack him in any way, or demean him.  He says simply: "Friend, is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of Man?...do what you are here to do."  Jesus lived and exemplified the message which he'd undoubtedly often preached to friends and followers: denying oneself, taking up the cross, and losing one's life: even for a disloyal friend such as Judas.

Aelred again:  "And so in [true] friendship are joined honor and charm, truth and joy, sweetness and good-will, affection and action.  And all these take their beginning from Christ, advance through Christ, and are perfected in Christ.  Therefore, not too steep or unnatural does the ascent appear from Christ, as the inspiration of love by which we love our friend, to Christ giving himself to us as our Friend for us to love...And thus, friend cleaving to friend in the spirit of Christ, is made with Christ but one heart and one soul..." (SF, 2.20-21)

"Thus ascending from that holy love with which he embraces a friend to that with which he embraces Christ, he will joyfully partake in abundance of the spiritual fruit of friendship, awaiting the fullness of all things in the life to come...and God shall be all in all." (SF, 3.134)

 

Of Beloved Sons & Baptism

Today the Church celebrates the Baptism of Jesus.  Its whole theology is at the root of the Christian sacrament of baptism, and that means more than just a "christening", more than having a child "done" liturgically, more than admission to a Holy Club.  I see it as the unique "ordination", if you will, of every baptized person, the initiation into one's unique mission and ministry in human and spiritual life.  Regardless of the age at which one is baptized, there are profound implications for the rest of one's life, even if individually we forget to or don't acknowledge them.

Dealing as my family and I have been with my son's serious illness these past few weeks, I find the passage in Mark's Gospel today most poignant: "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."   Coincidentally, Andrew celebrated the 34th anniversary of his own baptism last Tuesday, January 6, the feast of the Epiphany.  He was baptized at St. Barnabas Catholic Church, Alameda, CA, by my seminary classmate, Fr. Jim Franck.

We’ve just recently celebrated the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. There’s always the danger of focussing entirely on Jesus, the baby. Our remembrance of His birth should lead us to the further consideration of the life and death of the person whom the baby grew to be. We too often get emotionally caught up in the music, the art, the joy of the wonderful Christ Child and his mother. What should be the beginning of a journey becomes all that there is. If our joy centers only on a remembrance, then we miss Christmas’ challenge and call.

What Mark records in today’s Gospel account is the first event in Jesus’ life about which he tells us. Some folks find this story of Jesus’ baptism troubling. If the only purpose of John’s baptism was a cleansing from sin, the story would seem to clash with the belief that Jesus was without sin. If you look at Matthew’s interpretation of the event, even John the Baptizer is troubled by Jesus’ request for baptism. “I need to be baptized by you,” he says, “and do you come to me?” Jesus reassures John, saying: “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteouness.” Both Mark and Matthew subtly allude to a passage in the 42nd chapter of Isaiah: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him...” Jesus would have been quite familiar with that passage. He accepts his calling to be God’s servant, to do justice and to set things right, something that can be accomplished only by his accepting and affirming his relationship with people who are aware that they need to be made right with God.

By being conceived and born of a human mother, Jesus became our brother. In his baptism he now affirms that he’s truly one with us as we are, not just as we should be. There’s a lyric in the familiar Christmas carol, “O come, all ye faithful”, which says “Lo, he abhors not the virgin’s womb.” The more amazing truth is that Jesus abhors not the water of baptism and all that it implies of our need to be cleansed and healed and made right with God. A Jesus who would have entered the human experience only when it was good and right couldn’t have touched us as we really are. A Jesus who enters our lives without changing them is only “slumming”. What we need and what God has given us in God’s Beloved, is One who constantly enters our lives at their worst, and yet renews and restores them.

In Jesus, God is revealed as one who is determined to get involved in the messy human enterprise. It leads Jesus at once into temptation, into a ministry of teaching, with some people rejecting his message, and into a ministry of healing, even of people not always so appreciative of his effort. Eventually it led Jesus to imprisonment and the Cross. Jesus responds to the call of the God whom Isaiah knew. Like the prophet himself, Jesus knows that God involves Godself with real human beings, and he himself can respond in no other way.

What about us?? Think for a moment about what happens when a child is adopted into a family. If the child is asked: “When were you adopted?” he/she can give a specific day and year. But that isn’t really when adoption happens. Adoption happens when the child takes his or her place in the day-to-day relating among people in a family: at the point when the child says “I choose these particular people, in this particular context, regardless of their shortcomings and failings, to be my family: my father, mother, brothers and sisters.” Becoming part of a family in more than just name is a long, slow, creative process.

Baptism is much like adoption. It happens at a specific time and place on a specific day. (Mine was on March 14, 1937, at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Dayton, OH.) But somehow, baptism doesn’t, from our viewpoint, “take” until the person baptized deliberately accepts the risk to live it. In Jesus, God calls each of us as God’s son or daughter. Can we deliberately risk responding to that call? And to what, exactly, does God call us?

In particular, I believe that God calls you and me to be with others. By virtue of being adopted as God’s children, we’re thereby made brothers and sisters of one another. Sometimes that’s a source of immense joy. But if you’ve lived in a family with your siblings, you probably know that it isn’t all sharing a plate of fresh cookies on the back porch in the sunshine! A little boy prayed fervently in Sunday school: “Dear God, please bless everybody except Tommy.” The teacher assured the boy that God understood that his little brother was often difficult to live with, but that God loved Tommy very much. “Then he’s a mighty funny kind of God,” said the little boy.

Isaiah, Paul, John the Baptizer, and Jesus all found that the God who calls us, calls us into relationships involving risk and cost, sometimes with people we’d perhaps never choose as our friends, much less as our sisters and brothers! But, then, God is a funny kind of God: funny enough to love and call all of us.

The struggle you and I experience in living out baptism isn’t so much choosing between good and evil as choosing between patterns which lead to greater love, acceptance, unity, goodness, and freedom; and patterns which don’t. Stealing, for example, is evil. Hardening one’s heart against the poor is evil; murder is evil; letting people starve to death, wherever they are in the world, is evil. But so is denying anyone the chance to continue to grow; or playing to the worst in others. Any of us can honestly say that we’ve never killed anyone. On a scale of virtue, that would be worth a 10. But what about the times we’ve “sunk the knife” into someone with a cutting remark or a glare? What of the times we lock people into our own expectations; or the times we write people off simply on the basis of some insigificant or selfish standard of ours? “Dear God, please bless everyone except this person or that person.” Each of us has a “Tommy”.

In calling us into relationship with his Father, Jesus calls us both to be made right ourselves and to become part of God’s desire to call all people, all of life, into right relationship. If we pretend we’re already in such a good and right relationship with God, so that we don’t need healing, we’re in actuality refusing God’s love. People who thought of themselves as holy enough refused John’s offer of baptism -- but not Jesus. Keeping our relationship with God a private matter, just between God and me alone, isn’t an option. God can’t and won’t be so confined. If you invite Jesus to dinner, you need to be prepared for him to show up with his other friends. And you never know whom he’ll bring: perhaps someone you’ve never gotten to know, perhaps someone “interesting” or sophisticated, “our kind”. But then again, he may just bring Tommy.

In baptism you and I are given to one another, called to live in relationship, because that’s the way Jesus chooses to extend his love and grace in the world. We’re each of us God’s “Beloved”, called to be a “light to the nations, to open eyes that are blind”, to release those bound up in darkness and hopelessness. May God, as with Jesus, be “well pleased” with you and me -- and yes, even with Tommy! 

"Bird Woman" - "Woman Who Prays"

In February, 1875, the Kiowa Indians, under their leader, Guipago or Lone Wolf, surrendered themselves at Ft. Sill.  The following month of March proved to be a busy one for the U.S. Congress, which enacted a Civil Rights Act, invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1883; and which authorized a 20¢ coin, lasting only three years. Georges Bizet's opera, Carmen, premiered in Paris on March 3, and on the same day the first recorded hockey game took place in Montreal.  Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, and on March 15 John McCloskey was named the first U.S. cardinal in the Catholic Church.  Four days later, March 19, Harriet Bedell was born in Buffalo, NY.

Who is Harriet Bedell, you ask?  Had you posed that question to me two months ago, I couldn't have answered you.  I'd never heard of her until I was skimming through Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2006 and found her commemoration listed for January 8.  I haven't been able to find anything about her early life, except that she was trained as a school teacher.  When she was almost 31, in the winter of 1905-06, an Episcopal missionary came to her home church and she was greatly inspired by his talk about the need for volunteers to work in the missions of China.  In 1906 she left her teaching job and was accepted into the New York Training School for Deaconesses in New York City, where she received instruction in missiology, hospital nursing, hygiene, teaching, and religious aspects of missionary work.  She spent another year, by her choice, studying nursing in Buffalo, and soon after was appointed as an apprentice deaconess.  She was first sent as a missionary-teacher to the Cheyenne people at Whirlwind Mission in Oklahoma, where she assisted Deacon David Pendleton Oakerhater, dubbed "God's warrior" by the Cheyenne.  The Episcopal Church also commemorates him on September 1.  

Harriet energetically embraced her new work: educating women and children, caring for the sick and poor, organizing social services for native Americans, providing religious instruction.  She gradually gained the trust and respect of the Cheyenne, to the point that she was adopted into their tribe and given the name "Vicsehia", meaning "Bird Woman". The name was apparently inspired by the fact that Harriet sang, hummed, and whistled as she worked.  Eventually, her labors took a toll on her when she contracted tuberculosis and had to be sent to Colorado to recover.  According to Harriet herself, she was miraculously cured of her affliction after attending a healing service.

When Harriet Bedell was 41 an Episcopal bishop asked her to consider an assignment in a remote area of Alaska. Though saddened by having to leave her people in Oklahoma, she nevertheless accepted the new missionary work in Stevens Village, Alaska.  Six years later, in 1922, she travelled to Portland, OR, where she was ordained a deaconess in the Episcopal Church.  She continued her labors in Alaska, although the mission at Stevens Village was moved eventually to Tanana so that a boarding school, funded by church members' contributions, could be established for the children unable to travel in the severe winter weather.  Then came the Great Depression.  By 1931, funds were so scarce that Deaconess Bedell returned to New York to plead for more contributions.  There was little response because there was little money available.  Though the church paid off the school's existing debt, Harriet realized that there was no point in returning to Alaska.

She remained in New York on a sabbatical with her family in Buffalo, and during that time the Bishop of New York requested that she visit missions in Florida in order to recruit church workers.  On this trip she encountered the Miccosukee-Seminole tribe.  She was appalled by their living conditions, and set about improving the quality of their lives, living and working among them.  With the backing of Bishop Wing in Miami and the Collier Corporation in the Everglades (now Everglades City), Harriet set up a mission to minister to native Americans and other local people.  She taught Sunday school, sewing, literature, music, hygiene, and various other skills to the Miccosukee and to children of Marco Island and Collier County.  She sought to revive doll-making and basket-weaving skills which had almost become extinct.  She encouraged the incorporation of intricate patchwork designs, made by Indian women, into articles of clothing for both women and men.  Sales from the clothing, beadwork, pottery, carving, and leatherwork at the store at Blades Cross Mission helped improve the income of the Miccasukee-Seminoles.  

As with the Cheyenne, the Miccasukee responded to Deaconess Harriet's self-giving love by adopting her and giving her the name "Inkoshopie", "Woman Who Prays".  Every Christmas she would throw a huge party, with feasting and entertainment, as well as gifts for all the native Americans and children from Everglades.  She worked tirelessly, even in her retirement, to promote the sales of native American cultural items and to prevent cheap imitations from entering the country.

Hurricane Donna struck Florida in 1960, during which Harriet, now 85, was forced to evacuate her home.  The hurricane leveled her property and destroyed her belongings, among them her typewriter, sewing machine, and children's books and gifts which she had set aside for the upcoming holiday celebration.  The bishop finally insisted that, because of her advanced age, she retire from active ministry, and so she moved to the Bishop Gray Inn, an Episcopalian retirement home in Davenport, FL.  Nevertheless, she continued planning and teaching Sunday school, working in the infirmary, and recruiting for mission workers.  In 1965 she was given a huge 90th birthday party, and Coronet magazine featured her in an article.  There were write-ups in many other newspapers and magazines, and even two books written about her: A Woman Set Apart, by William and Ellen Hartley (New York, 1953), and Deaconess of the Everglades, by Elizabeth Scott Ames (Cortland, NY, 1995).  Harriet Bedell died on January 8, 1969, just short of her 94th birthday.

The life of this dedicated deaconess and missionary was marked by her emphasis on health and education, rather than on religious conversion, for native Americans.  And so the Episcopal Church prays today:

Holy God, you chose your faithful servant Harriet Bedell

to exercise the ministry of deaconess and to be a missionary

among indigenous peoples: Fill us with compassion and respect

for all people, and empower us for the work of ministry

throughout the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord...  

       

"Hope springs in the heart, eternal..."

Late this afternoon, Andrew's friend, Stephen, took this photo with his iPhone shortly after Andrew was taken off the respirator and the breathing tube was removed.  The wonders of technology! Even more important to me than the scientific wonder is the visual link it now gives me to my son, providing a sort of "icon" on which I can focus as I join the many other people who are thinking of and praying for Andrew's recovery.  There are no illusions in my mind that the road ahead is a long one.  I learned that the last time he went through this almost ten years ago.  But, by God's grace and mercy, there is new hope today that "all shall be well".  Please join me in giving thanks.

It Ain't Easy...

So, there I was yesterday, standing in the California Pizza Kitchen area of the Charlotte, NC airport, on my way back to California from a week in West Palm Beach, FL, tears running unabashedly down my face as David Gray sang poignantly over the speaker, "It's Not Easy To Be Me".  I know the song well.  For me, Andrew immortalized it in a piece which he choreographed several years ago, called "Superman".  God knows how many times I've looked at the DVD of him performing it, out of costume, in a studio in Memphis.  And every time I end up in tears.  

I can't stand to fly,

I'm not that naive;

I'm just out to find

The better part of me.

I'm more than a bird...I'm more than a plane,

More than some pretty face beside a train:

It's not easy to be me.

I wish that I could cry, 

Fall upon my knees,

Find a way to lie

'bout a home I'll never see.

It may sound absurd...but don't be naive:

Even heroes have the right to bleed.

I may be disturbed...but won't you concede

Even heroes have the right to dream.

It's not easy to be me.

Up, up and away...away from me.

Well it's all right...You can all sleep sound tonight.

I'm not crazy...or anything...

I can't stand to fly,

I'm not that naive.

Men weren't meant to ride

With clouds between their knees.

I'm only a man in a silly red sheet

Digging for kryptonite on this one way street;

Only a man in a funny red sheet, 

Looking for special things inside of me,

inside of me....inside of me...(x 2)

I'm only a man in a funny red sheet,

I'm only a man looking for a dream.

I'm only a man in a funny red sheet.

It's not easy...wu...hoo...hoo...

It's not easy to be me....

The lyrics speak a lot about this complex "baby" kid of mine.  For the second time in almost ten years, Andrew is lying in a hospital on a respirator, while I and his family and friends have to look on, unable to change the reality which confronts us.  For me, it was quite different this time because the New Year of 2009 almost rang in without Andrew.  It was that close on New Year's Eve as he nearly went into cardiac arrest.  I hope I'll never ever again have to face the responsibility which Andrew had entrusted to me: essentially of playing God and deciding whether or not he was to continue living.  Mercifully, through the haze of medication and all the hell that had broken loose around him, he drew from his immense inner strength and gave us the answer -- on a notepad -- "I want to live".  And so far, he's managed to do just that.

A series of crises have challenged Andrew since he was stricken again on the night and early morning of Dec. 17-18 with a recurrence of Bickerstaff's brainstem encephalitis.  It's a rare and nasty disease which leads you up and down a yo-yo ride of hopeful progress, then discouraging setback -- often within the same day.  Add to that, this time, a staph infection which developed early on in the course of administering the plasmapheresis treatment, the events which finally led to his being intubated,  and then the collapse of his left lung on Thursday, it was like a comedy of the absurd.  Thankfully, the lung expanded immediately with the insertion of the tube, and his breathing has improved since then.  I can't praise highly enough the care given by the SICU staff, once he got there.  They have been terrific.  Andrew has managed, most days, to communicate with them and us by notepad, exhibiting his characteristic sense of humor, timely irreverence, bossiness, and his own expansive humanity and caring for the needs of others.  

Just as last time, the plasmapheresis treatments (essentially, exchange of the blood platelets), of which he's had 11, by my count (each taking about 1 1/2 hrs.), have been key to his recovery.  Last week he was unable to move his legs; this week he's moved them, with a certain amount of strength, though he'll still undoubtedly need a lot of physical therapy in the future.  His breathing is what concerns me: how much it has been affected, both by the condition itself as well as the necessary sedative medication, no one knows.  But generally this past week his spirits were pretty good.  Understandably, he has an occasional "emotional" or "down" day.  We've communicated to him how many of his family, friends and acquaintances are pulling for him, praying for him, etc., and I can assure you that he appreciates it immensely.

Aside from medical considerations, Andrew’s situation is likewise challenging.  Andrew had completed his work with Ballet Florida in the fall, having raised some $800,000 for them, and turned the sights of his prodction company, AAP, to a new project on Anne Frank.  He and his longtime friend and business associate formulated a detailed and workable plan, did considerable work all over the country generating interest and support for it, seeking financial backing, etc.  Unfortunately, at that point sufficient funding hadn't come through as yet.  And, with his illness, the project has been put on hold.  To say that they have been living "on a shoestring" would be an understatement.  He also has no medical insurance; as far as we know, some emergency insurance through the County and Medicaid is absorbing the cost so far.  His car has been repossessed and the house he and Todd have been renting could possibly be leased out to someone else at some point.  Nevertheless, Andrew has taught me that "to live one day at a time" isn't just a catchy saying.  We've seen the possible emerge from the seemingly impossible many times just during the past week together.   

In West Palm Beach, Todd and "Support Team 2" have mobilized to look after Andrew and keep our family informed.  There aren't words enough express how very much Andrew’s family and close friends appreciate all the continued caring, support, and love.  As David Gray's song says, we're all of us running around in our "silly red sheets", looking for dreams and for the special things inside each of us.  And they're there: believe me, I've seen them over and over, and I've seen how willing people are, nearby and far away, to share them.  If we can together continue doing that, in the words of the great 14th century woman, Julian of Norwich, "all shall be well"!